On the phone from her London home, Collins says she's lying on her bed with a stitch on - a stitch of makeup, that is.

"I'm just back from a weekend in the country and wore no makeup at all," Collins says. "But it's getting to be 5 o'clock, and I have to get ready to go out to theater and dinner with friends. It will take me five minutes to slap on some makeup."

Collins points out that in England they call makeup "slap" for that very reason.

"I have a lot of gay friends in the business in England," Collins says, "and they speak an interesting patois. 'I don't like her slap, dear,' is something they might say."

Campy TV villain

But to hear Collins say "slap" brings something else to mind: one of the epic bitch-slapping fights she had with Linda Evans throughout the '80s on "Dynasty." Though she has written five novels and three volumes of autobiography and appeared in countless movies and TV shows, she'll always be known as the raven-haired Alexis Morrell Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan, one of TV's campiest villains.

She'll discuss everything from makeup secrets (eat an avocado a day) to her five marriages to all those "Dynasty" fights in her one-woman autobiographical show, "One Night With Joan," coming to Feinstein's at the Nikko.

One thing she won't talk about much is age. "I'm not defined by age," she says. "I don't act, look, feel or behave like somebody of my generation necessarily. I don't talk about it because it's a boring subject. In 100 years, people will be living so much longer. Look, 100 years ago, the average life expectancy was 48 to 50. Now, in the developed world, it's something like between 82 and 84. We have to stop being defined by our age."

Collins took control of her looks early on when she got frustrated sitting in the Hollywood makeup chair.

"I felt the brushes weren't clean enough and hands hadn't been washed enough," she says. "And it took too long. I had Allan Snyder, who was Marilyn Monroe's makeup man, on my first movie, and he taught me how to apply makeup to keep it on for 12 hours a day. I once peeked through when he was making up Marilyn for a big event at Fox, a dinner for Khrushchev. I watched him carefully. It's not rocket science. I've always done my own makeup since."

In her show, which is directed by her fifth husband, Percy Gibson (who also happens to be 32 years her junior), she talks about the ups and downs of her 60-plus-year career. She was named the most beautiful girl in England at 18, got caught up in the Hollywood studio machine, and won a Golden Globe as most promising newcomer. In the '70s, when her career began to slide, she made movies like "The Bitch," "The Stud" and "Empire of the Ants." But then along came "Dynasty," and her well-made-up face has rarely been out of the limelight since.

Lovers in life, movies

For her intimate "One Night" outing, Collins shows film clips, tells tales and then treats herself to a glass of wine - "I think I deserve that" - while taking audience questions for 20 minutes. Certainly, there are questions about her real-life loves, including husbands (in order) Maxwell Reed, Anthony Newley, Ron Kass, Peter Holm and Gibson. But most fans would rather dish about her screen loves.

Don't bother to ask about plastic surgery. She says she hasn't had it - too "needle phobic," she says. And who needs surgery when you can slap on some makeup?

Staying power

While touring with the show, promoting "Passion for Life," her latest memoir, and hawking her cosmetics in Europe (they're not yet available in the United States), Collins will also prepare to shoot a new movie: "The Time of Their Lives," co-starring Pauline Collins (no relation) and Franco Nero.

"It's about two women who take a journey together, rather like 'Thelma and Louise: The Next Generation,' " she says.

Collins has always seemed to know how to simply keep going. When the acting roles got dodgy, she took a cue from sister Jackie Collins and started writing. But the acting roles keep coming, as do the new projects.

Of all the things in her life - her three children, her three grandchildren - Collins says she's most proud of herself.

"I've survived in one of the toughest professions for many years," she says. "I would say that is something to be proud of."